10
Subtle Agroecologies
DO ECOLOGICALLY BASED FARMING SYSTEMS FULLY EMBRACE INDIGENOUS PRAXIS?
The agroecology, organic farming and permaculture movements pride themselves on being based
on a fusion of local and indigenous knowledge with appropriate, modern science. Albert Howard
and others in the organic movement had been heavily infuenced by exposure to sustainable farming practices in other parts of the world (e.g. see King, 2004). Miguel Altieri describes agroecology as a ‘culturally acceptable approach as it builds upon traditional knowledge and promotes a
dialogue of wisdoms with more Western scientific approaches’ (Altieri and Toledo, 2011: 599).
Permaculture’s co-founder, Bill Mollison, attributed much of its content to what he learned from
the indigenous people of Tasmania and others around the world (Fox, 2009). For biodynamic farming, however, and rather than claiming to draw from indigenous cultures, its knowledge base –
primarily one set of lectures – was transmitted by one person, Rudolf Steiner, a German-Austrian
polymath philosopher, scientist and mystic who lived from 1861 to 1925. Steiner was heavily infuenced by German mysticism, theosophy, Gnostic Christianity, the Cathars, alchemists, Buddhism
and Hinduism, amongst other traditions (McKanan, 2018), and in particular the works of Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe. Primarily though, Steiner explored the spiritual worlds, which he did meticulously (Courtney, 2005), and his lectures were based on his insights and inner visions from these
spiritual exercises. ‘I bore a content of spiritual impressions within me. I gave form to these in
lectures, articles, and books. What I did was done out of spiritual impulses’ (Steiner, 1928: 316).
With regard to embracing indigenous concepts, some of the organic farming pioneers did publicly recognise energetic and spiritual dimensions, as evidenced in Eve Balfour’s classic address
to an IFOAM 3 conference in Switzerland in 1977 and partly infuenced, she acknowledges, by the
Steiner-inspired Anthroposophical Society (paras 41, 62):
A food-chain is not only a material circuit, but also an energy circuit. Soil fertility has been defned as
the capacity of soil to receive, store and transmit energy. A substance may be the same chemically but
very different as a conductor of living energy… We cannot escape from the ethical and spiritual values
of life for they are part of wholeness. To ignore them and their implications would be to pursue another
form of fragmentation.
Nevertheless, and whatever members’ personal beliefs, the organic movement as a whole seemingly
made a conscious decision early on to avoid bringing the spiritual into farming, most certainly infuenced in the UK by the leading organic protagonist at the time, Albert Howard. This is rather curious in that Howard had spent three decades in India and acknowledges to have learned more from
Indian farmers than he could teach them (Howard, 1953). He must therefore have encountered the
Vedic worldview and the associated widespread, spiritually oriented, ritualistic farming practices.
We may speculate that Howard, who was known to be sceptical of Steiner’s teachings (Barton, 2018;
Clunies-Ross, 1990), remained unconvinced or that he may have been protecting his own reputation as a credible fgure within the scientifc establishment, engaging as he did in national scientifc
debates (Conford, 2001).
With regard to permaculture, Mollison strategically distanced the movement from what he felt
were unqualifed, personal belief systems (as described in the prelude to this chapter). He may yet
have held nonconformist beliefs himself, in one of his recorded lectures letting slip that:
The great preoccupation of Aboriginal Australians is dimension… and they can manipulate time, they
can go else-when… There are 5 people alive who… can handle 7 dimensions easily… and they are saying that isn’t it funny that as we are being decimated, some few of us are really getting a grip on things. 4
With regard to the agroecology movement, it has on the one hand positioned itself as the most
overtly political of its ecological stablemates and the one that most explicitly defends small-scale,
3 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6IjtEXyks, This video clip was accessed on 29 June 2020 but has since then (as of
September 2020) been taken down by Tagari Publications.
Subtle Agroecologies
DO ECOLOGICALLY BASED FARMING SYSTEMS FULLY EMBRACE INDIGENOUS PRAXIS?
The agroecology, organic farming and permaculture movements pride themselves on being based
on a fusion of local and indigenous knowledge with appropriate, modern science. Albert Howard
and others in the organic movement had been heavily infuenced by exposure to sustainable farming practices in other parts of the world (e.g. see King, 2004). Miguel Altieri describes agroecology as a ‘culturally acceptable approach as it builds upon traditional knowledge and promotes a
dialogue of wisdoms with more Western scientific approaches’ (Altieri and Toledo, 2011: 599).
Permaculture’s co-founder, Bill Mollison, attributed much of its content to what he learned from
the indigenous people of Tasmania and others around the world (Fox, 2009). For biodynamic farming, however, and rather than claiming to draw from indigenous cultures, its knowledge base –
primarily one set of lectures – was transmitted by one person, Rudolf Steiner, a German-Austrian
polymath philosopher, scientist and mystic who lived from 1861 to 1925. Steiner was heavily infuenced by German mysticism, theosophy, Gnostic Christianity, the Cathars, alchemists, Buddhism
and Hinduism, amongst other traditions (McKanan, 2018), and in particular the works of Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe. Primarily though, Steiner explored the spiritual worlds, which he did meticulously (Courtney, 2005), and his lectures were based on his insights and inner visions from these
spiritual exercises. ‘I bore a content of spiritual impressions within me. I gave form to these in
lectures, articles, and books. What I did was done out of spiritual impulses’ (Steiner, 1928: 316).
With regard to embracing indigenous concepts, some of the organic farming pioneers did publicly recognise energetic and spiritual dimensions, as evidenced in Eve Balfour’s classic address
to an IFOAM 3 conference in Switzerland in 1977 and partly infuenced, she acknowledges, by the
Steiner-inspired Anthroposophical Society (paras 41, 62):
A food-chain is not only a material circuit, but also an energy circuit. Soil fertility has been defned as
the capacity of soil to receive, store and transmit energy. A substance may be the same chemically but
very different as a conductor of living energy… We cannot escape from the ethical and spiritual values
of life for they are part of wholeness. To ignore them and their implications would be to pursue another
form of fragmentation.
Nevertheless, and whatever members’ personal beliefs, the organic movement as a whole seemingly
made a conscious decision early on to avoid bringing the spiritual into farming, most certainly infuenced in the UK by the leading organic protagonist at the time, Albert Howard. This is rather curious in that Howard had spent three decades in India and acknowledges to have learned more from
Indian farmers than he could teach them (Howard, 1953). He must therefore have encountered the
Vedic worldview and the associated widespread, spiritually oriented, ritualistic farming practices.
We may speculate that Howard, who was known to be sceptical of Steiner’s teachings (Barton, 2018;
Clunies-Ross, 1990), remained unconvinced or that he may have been protecting his own reputation as a credible fgure within the scientifc establishment, engaging as he did in national scientifc
debates (Conford, 2001).
With regard to permaculture, Mollison strategically distanced the movement from what he felt
were unqualifed, personal belief systems (as described in the prelude to this chapter). He may yet
have held nonconformist beliefs himself, in one of his recorded lectures letting slip that:
The great preoccupation of Aboriginal Australians is dimension… and they can manipulate time, they
can go else-when… There are 5 people alive who… can handle 7 dimensions easily… and they are saying that isn’t it funny that as we are being decimated, some few of us are really getting a grip on things. 4
With regard to the agroecology movement, it has on the one hand positioned itself as the most
overtly political of its ecological stablemates and the one that most explicitly defends small-scale,
3 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6IjtEXyks, This video clip was accessed on 29 June 2020 but has since then (as of
September 2020) been taken down by Tagari Publications.